tephen Harper’s appeal to the voters to
deliver him a majority government did not
fall on deaf ears.
The Conservatives picked up 167 seats,
an increase of 24 seats.
The Tory tide once again swept across Ottawa,
with only David McGuinty and Mauril Belanger
holding on to Liberal seats in Ottawa South and
Ottawa-Vanier. In Ottawa Centre, Paul Dewar
secured his seat for the NDP.
The anticipated surge of NDP support did not
hurt the Tories, except in a few ridings in Quebec, where most of the seats picked up by the
party were taken from the Liberals.
During the campaign, the prime minister
warned Canadians that a minority Tory government couldn’t hold on to power and would fall
prey to a coalition of the Liberals, NDP or potentially the Bloc Quebecois.
Harper’s predictions were alarming with
warnings of hits to the financial markets, deficit
spending and possibly reopening the Constitution
for another divisive debate that nobody wanted.
Canadians obviously listened, and Harper no
longer faces the spectre of having to compromise

or work to achieve consensus with the opposition.
But is that necessarily a good thing?
Yes, a majority government will give the Tories
the tools to pass legislation that could have been
delayed by a united opposition.
And as Tory MP Gordon O’Connor pointed out, a
majority win will allow the Conservatives to stand
down from continuous preparation for yet another
election, and focus on the task of governing.
But when they were a minority government,
the Tories were forced to listen to the ideas of
other parties and to compromise.
The politics of consensus forces a leader to sift
through the ideas of competing parties and incorporate the best parts within his or her own policies.
We hope winning a majority won’t go Harper’s
head.
The Tories often use the word “arrogance” to
explain the federal Liberals fall in fortune, they
might want to avoid a similar accusation over the
next four years.
Be a good prime minister, Harper.
Listen to other ideas, use the best ones.
Remember, in a democracy we elect a prime
minister, we don’t anoint a king.

COLUMN

A winter game for all seasons

M

any factors go into making
Canada the unique country it
is, as recent political events
have shown.
On a non-political level, we have Tim
Hortons and the Group of Seven and
a large group of comedians located in
the United States. We have football with
three downs. We have three coasts and at
least two seasons. We have many languages and very few species of deadly
snakes. We have movie theatres that
don’t show Canadian movies. Oh, wait,
other countries have those too.
One of the other non-political things
that has been commented upon lately is
the fact that our hockey season, the season for a winter game played on ice, now
lasts into June. In fact, one estimate puts
the last possible Stanley Cup final game
as late as June 18.
This has consequences that go far
beyond sport. Coupled with daylight saving time, it means that many Canadians
will be indoors in the air-conditioning
watching television while the sun is still
shining and they could be outside playing games and getting fit.
It also means that a goodly percentage
of Canadians, those who avidly follow

CHARLES
GORDON
Funny Town
playoff games, show up for work tired
and grouchy, or not show up at all. Productivity declines.
Furthermore, children of permissive
parents who avidly follow games played
on the west coast will be difficult in class
unless, mercifully, they fall asleep. This
may explain why our children are constantly outperformed by children who
come from countries where there is no
hockey. These are some of the important
social and economic consequences of our
obsession with hockey and the hockey
owners’ obsession with dragging out the
season.
As we see from the world news, in
most other countries, spring is a time for
getting the crops in, playing baseball and
staging insurrections. Not here. Which

East

just goes to show that there is more to the
Canadian identity than an unelected Senate and the notwithstanding clause.
If the hockey nuttiness ended here,
you could put it down to a mild case of
national eccentricity – people staying up
too late, watching TV when they could be
strolling in the spring evening air when
it’s not raining. But, unfortunately, there
is more to it. For at the same time as the
rest of the world is having revolutions,
spring planting and baseball games,
those Canadians who venture outdoors,
are playing hockey.
But they’re not playing hockey with ice
and a puck. They’re playing hockey with
pavement and a ball. Ball hockey interest peaks in the spring because all those
boys and girls and their parents want to
try out the moves they see on television,
except for the hitting from behind and
elbows to the head.
So out they go onto the street, between
televised games, just as the professional
hockey season is winding down and
many hockey players, in fact, are out on
the golf course. This typically Canadian
scene causes cars to be inconvenienced
and the more fussy neighbours to be upset, leading in turn to another uniquely

Canadian phenomenon – the complaint
to city hall and the police raid on street
hockey nets. If you lived in Lusaka, Jakarta or Paris, you would not be aware of
any of this. The streets of those cities are
notable for their absence of hockey nets.
In Canada, the police raids on outdoor
hockey nets lead to letters to the editor,
phone calls to talk radio shows and a lot
of public hand-wringing generally. The
rights of kids (and their parents) to have
fun are weighed against the right of private property and a uniquely Canadian
philosophical battle ensues.
This will last until the real hockey
season begins again and everybody goes
back inside.

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